Insight Help Center
Academic Expectations
When teachers have high expectations for students’ success, they have a meaningful positive impact on academic achievement. In this Insight survey domain, teachers share their perceptions of what their students can achieve and their engagement with grade-level standards.
Recommendations
Based on our extensive experience, TNTP recommends the following as evidence-based practices for this domain:
- Allow teachers to see students succeeding with more rigorous material through peer or leader modeling.
- Learn which teachers are spending the most time creating or finding lessons outside the adopted curriculum and ask why.
- Model holding all students to a high standard and communicate expectations that all students will be given grade-appropriate assignments regardless of current performance level.
- Avoid asking teachers to consciously suppress their biases; this can be counterproductive.
Resources
| Resource | Description |
| The Opportunity Myth | A report on TNTP’s national research showing that students have unequal access to key resources, including having teachers who hold high expectations for them |
| Teachers’ Expectations Survey | A survey to gather information about teachers’ expectations for students |
| Good to Great Reflection Guide | A reflection protocol to keep notes on what your students achieve when they’re given the chance to try grade-appropriate assignments |
| Bias Toolkit | A toolkit from UnboundEd for having brave conversations about bias as a school community |
| A Vicious Cycle: A Social–Psychological Account of Extreme Racial Disparities in School Discipline | An article summarizing research on how teacher expectations based on race can affect school discipline decisions |
| Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond | An exploration of how neuroscience can inform effective culturally responsive teaching to engage culturally and linguistically diverse students in learning |